Edema Rue

To the theatre, regarding the cast:

I love standing on your stage.

Or sitting.

Or crawling.

Or being stabbed,

Or being held.

I love pretending for an eager audience.

But I don’t love you for them.

I don’t love you so I can be admired by thousands.

I don’t love you for the crowd;

I love you for the cast.

I don’t want to be loved by faces I don’t know, by people who see only the performance, by people who will love me and leave me in the same breath.

I don’t need them.

I don’t need an audience.

I need your acolytes;

I need your servants,

I need your cast.

But the audience is laughing, and the cast is so cruel.

Their care has conditions; their love is not free. Each hug is a distraction, so they can tie another string. They dance with the strings, twirl them like ribbons, and I stumble along, unaware of the danger.

It’s easier to hide.

To stay off your stage.

It’s easier to traipse along with nothing to navigate, no messy people to try to understand. 

But I don’t want easier.

I want you.

And you are more than a stage.

I want what isn’t on the stage.

I want the parts no one ever sees, but everyone knows are there.

They are there. Right?

Because the hope that I’ll find them is keeping me alive.

You wouldn’t lie about something like that...

Love without strings.

Family without fear.

Belonging without breaking.

Laughter without loneliness.

Beauty without bravery.

Perfection without pain.

Care without conditions…

That’s what I wanted from the cast.

I wanted it to be easy, and natural.

I saw your acolytes as deities, and foolishly believed that they would act like the gods I saw under your lights.

That they were a pantheon where any could belong…but that there was no hierarchy.

No tiers,

And no tears.

Nothing I need to do, nothing I need to be.

It was foolish.

I see it now.

It was a child’s dream. And I should have given it up years ago.

But maybe…

Sometimes I think the dreaming is worth it.

And sometimes I think that trudging though life in a mindless oblivion is better than hurting for this moment.

And sometimes I wonder why I bother to dream

And then I open a book,

And I watch them rehearse,

And I hear laughter

In my mind.

And then I think

That maybe it’s time to pick up woodworking.

That maybe

The work and the pain and the failure are worth it for the dreams that could someday come true.

I want things that will never be. A curse, and a blessing. A curse, for the eternal hunger that will never be satisfied. And a blessing, for, like Orpheus, I can see the way the world could be, in spite of the way that it is. 

So maybe,

It’s time,

To stop waiting for a cast list

To tell me I belong.

Maybe,

It's time,

To pick up a hammer

And nails

And start building a home of my own.

No walls,

For though they keep out the cold,

They keep out the lonely as well.

But a roof, to keep away the rain.

And a fire, to keep us warm.

And a stage, because wherever I go and whoever I become,

You will be there with me.

Rue